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I seriously doubt it will be implemented against any company or person that is sufficiently connected to the PRC government - this list would include pretty much every existing big company HQ'd in China.

Now potential competitors to the aforementioned companies, and anyone who the PRC government doesn't like? Oh hell yes it'll be implemented - even if the offender has to get a little governmental 'assistance' in generating pollution sufficient to warrant execution.

This isn't about littering. This is about high level leadership making choices for quick profit over sustainable methods. Historically and criminologically the only place that severe punishments ever worked has been at that level, because at that level people spend significant amount of consideration about risk/reward ratio.

It's the same reason why tough penalties don't work for petty crime or desperate people - they do not perform same evaluations with anywhere near the same seriousness or effort.

Excessively harsh penalties tend to be counter-productive because they are almost never carried out

Tell that to the people China executed over industrial-scale adulteration of milk with melamine in 2008:

A number of criminal prosecutions occurred, with two people being executed, another given a suspended death penalty, three others receiving life imprisonment, two receiving 15-year jail terms,[6] and seven local government officials, as well as the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) being fired or forced to resign.

Just because the government of our Megacorporate States of America would never dream about enforcing substantial penalties against our industrialist overlords for mass-murdering in the name of profit, doesn't mean China won't.

Do you believe a single person punished in that incident was actually a powerful decision-maker? I guess it would be possible, but it wouldn't be my first assumption. (Complicit, sure, but the actual decision makers?)

The punishments included life imprisonment for Tian Wenhua (former chairwoman of Sanlu Group), and 15 years imprisonment for Wang Yuliang (former executive of Sanlu) --- so, I'd say the punishment reached even the powerful on top (not just going after a few low-level employees while letting the executives get off with slap-on-the-wrist fines).

Do you believe a single person punished in that incident was actually a powerful decision-maker?

Punishing the people who give the orders is important. But it is often even more important to punish the people that follow the orders as well. There are a lot more order followers than order givers, and every one of them should have an incentive to refuse to obey, or even better, report the illegal activities. There should be accountability at every level, and no one should be able to get away with the Nuremberg defense of "I was only following orders."

Excessively harsh penalties tend to be counter-productive because they are almost never carried out

Tell that to the people China executed over industrial-scale adulteration of milk with melamine in 2008:

A number of criminal prosecutions occurred, with two people being executed, another given a suspended death penalty, three others receiving life imprisonment, two receiving 15-year jail terms,[6] and seven local government officials, as well as the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) being fired or forced to resign.

Just because the government of our Megacorporate States of America would never dream about enforcing substantial penalties against our industrialist overlords for mass-murdering in the name of profit, doesn't mean China won't.

Sad, isn't it? The people of the Communist People's Republic of China are more likely to get justice than the people of the morally upright USA. It may be a ragged and uneven justice, since with the right friends, offenders will often go scot-free, but occasionally they're going to crucify someone.

In the US, offenders may in extreme cases pay a small (cost of doing business) fine, but they'll never have to worry about accounting for their actions with their lives.

No. Our court system doesn't have the capacity to individually prosecute all the loan officers who systematically lied to people in order to induce them to assume levels of debt and then walked away from what they had done.

No. Our court system doesn't have the capacity to individually prosecute all the bankers who systematically sold securities they knew would crash to people in order to induce them and then walked away from what they had done.

No. Our court system doesn't have the capacity to individually prosecute all the coke snorting analysts and traders who cooked up a complicated system of CDO and derivatives and pretended to understand same, all the while demanding to be free from regulation and which later took the whole economy down , the only repercussion that they got bailed out, doubled down on their bonuses and walked away from what they had done.

No. Our court system doesn't have the capacity to individually prosecute all the degenerate economists and lobbyists whose "free market" deregulatory theories of non-reality paved the grounds for the entire meltdown but who took no responsibility and walked away from what they had done.

FTFY

Ayn Rand was a amphetamine addicted speed freak who was sexually aroused by stories of rapists, child molesters and murders.

Whoa man, I'm completely opposed to the death penalty. I think you and the mods have missed my point.

You point out one reason why death penalty is not in practice a deterrent. There are other reasons as well, but my point was that the IDEA behind the death penalty was deterrence. While the delay might mean it's not deterring anyone from crime, that doesn't mean that death penalty proponents have given up on deterrence as the goal and admitted it's just about killing people.

I'll bet a truckload of dead pigs that it won't result in any measurable improvement in China's environmental quality. China's environmental crisis has been brought about with the blessings of the Communist Party. Expecting them to now fix it by executing a few factory owners is very naïve indeed.

The Chinese can't even effectively fine polluters and now there's talk of capital punishment for polluting? What next? Decimate school children when their class average isn't up to par because the instructor's scolding has no effect?

There are several key problems here that are the real underlying problems: 1) the Chinese government is not unified in their vision of the environment and I'm talking differences spanning across provincial & federal levels as well as between federal ministries. 2) they collectively refuse to accept that their abuse of natural resources is part of their winning equation against other capitalist nation states and, as a consequence, no one can talk about how this will hurt their bottom line even though several parts of the government realize it (we pay them to import our pollution). 3) there is widespread corruption at all levels which is why fining is ineffective -- it's so bad that I'm sure if capital punishment is meted out, it will be given to the fork lift operator who dumped those pig carcasses in the river after his supervisor told him to "make them disappear or you'll disappear." No one up the chain will be held accountable and if they are, they need only grease some local wheels and they can consider themselves shielded.

It's disgusting and it's why I tell people where they can shove it when they complain that the EPA is destroying jobs. It's not perfect but we have to cling to things that kind of work when so many other "solutions" are abysmal failures.

The Chinese government is threatening to kill polluters but they can't see that they're part of and dependent on and benefiting from a system of habitual polluting. Increasing the impact of the punishment is a poor and maybe even more detrimental substitution for actually bringing to justice the true criminals up and down their ranks.

I second this. I spend a good portion of graduate school in Beijing and Manchuria, and you hit the nail on the head. The only people who will pay the price for pollution are the dumb schmucks whose guanxi is not powerful enough to shield them from scapegoating.

The Chinese can't even effectively fine polluters and now there's talk of capital punishment for polluting? What next? Decimate school children when their class average isn't up to par because the instructor's scolding has no effect?

They did execute some executives who were selling tainted baby milk a few years ago.

Really in China the crime is embarrassing the government. Environmental damage is just the particular means in this case. As with everything else this will be very selectively enforced. They could care less what you dump in the stacks as long as your incident isn't the one that makes CNN for a week. If that happens, Zàijiàn.

Not just environmental stuff. What about the wallstreet guys that stole or in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars.

Death penalty. Think about it like this.... that is the life savings of how many people? Guy robs a liquor store for 100 dollars and gets 20 years. Guy that steals 100 million gets 5 years in a minimum security prison.

Many cases of fraud, theft, vandalism, etc need to carry stiffer sentences. While of course other sentences need to be reduced radically. All the drug related crimes need to be looked again. Consensual adults and all that.

vandalism? So you think some kid doing graffiti should get a harsher penalty? I live in downtown LA and much of the graffiti here is quite artistic and adds value to its surroundings. I can agree with you that white collar crime should carry harsher penalties, but vandalism? Really?

vandalism? So you think some kid doing graffiti should get a harsher penalty?

Corporal punishment would be better in that case -- cheaper to administer, and probably better long-term for younger criminals rather than putting them in prison and effectively taking away valuable time from their developing years while exposing them to far worse criminals. Better for everyone if a juvenile vandal gets what Michael Fay [wikipedia.org] got in Singapore in 1994. It's painful and humiliating, but it's over with quickly, and he can go back to school the next day, mindful that he better not pull that kind of c

Well, in the Arts District of downtown there's graffiti on many buildings, and property prices there are climbing pretty steeply. And there has only been more graffiti since it started gentrifying. That said, I wasn't referring to property prices so much as the quality of life. There is true artistic merit to some of the graffiti, and I feel that it enriches the area as it's introducing interesting images to otherwise barren areas. Note that I'm not referring to the kind of tagging you see on freeway overpa

Holy bad example, Batman! A guy who robs a liquor store for $100 doesn't get 20 years for stealing $100. He gets 20 years for pointing a gun at the liquor store attendant and threatening his life for personal gain. Possibly as a repeat offender.

What a lot of commenters don't seem to get is that the sort of pollution that hardcore offenders engage in over there often results in human deaths. So the potential for punishment is merely being brought in line with the crime. You won't deter serious polluters with a fine.

That said, sure, many crimes are not proportional to their sentences. No news here. While we're making improbable demands, i think the act of spitting chewing gum on the street or sidewalk should be treated as vandalism, and enforced accordingly.

China is saving more lives abandoning communism and heavy socialism, as we are witnessing. Would that the west keep that in mind as it rockets in the wrong direction, living off past glories of economic freedom.

When free trade with China was originally promoted it was always promised China would become more like America with open markets and civil liberties. But I believe the opposite is true with America becoming more like China. Some examples are exemption of clean water act for oil and gas exploration, promotion of the keystone tar sand pipeline, and monsanto protection act. While these crony capitalism arrangements would not be surprising in China they are becoming more frequent here. Abolition of labor unions

We need stronger laws against companies to make them more accountable. Prove to me you did all you could to avoid polluting, I might be lenient.If I see that there is a flagrant denial for the law and pollution was done with no thought what so ever., you die! Not just you, but all the board members and employees delivering the sludge to location xx

I don't know. If you have the death penalty I can see pollution being a worthy offense. If you dump toxic waste into the drinking water and dozens get sick and die of cancer-- how is that any different from murder.

Good for China. Here in the US we would just fine them a few million... they would shift their assets to a sub division... sell that to themselves and declare bankruptcy without paying a dime. Then keep on doing what they were doing until they got caught the next time.

China is regularly executing people for large scale bribery and embezzlement. It makes sense to assume that someone whose activities are potentially lethal or health-threatening on a large scale wouldn't get a lesser penalty from the judges than a white collar criminal, if the Chinese have any sane system of preferences.

I don't know, but I'm curious too. I was speaking more theoretically. I think that practically you're far more likely to see deaths directly resulting from pollution to be tried as involuntary manslaughter. The difference between involuntary manslaughter and "depraved indifference" murder seems kind of nebulous to. Both cases result in a death, but in neither case was the death the actually intent of the person being convicted. I think the difference is a matter of degree. If you do something dangerous that

That's a bullshit statement. Not for career criminals or repeat offenders. They damn well care if they have a chance to kiss goodbye for a specific crime or not. Only random criminals who commit a crime in the heat of the moment might care less about death penalty. Still, in the back of the minds of most of them but complete psychos there will be a reminder that if you cross the line, you will have a good chance of leaving this world before the creator intended, and most of them will try not to cross the li

I think you don't know what "deterrent" means. Otherwise, your comment suggests that everyone should be preemptively executed just in case they might pollute. The idea of a deterrent punishment is that a potential criminal will consider the consequence of getting caught (death, in this case), but even in countries that still have the death penalty it's been shown over and over that it doesn't lower the incidents of that crime. Furthermore, the potential for executing an innocent person is a non-zero perc

The purpose of the death penalty is not to prevent recidivism. You could easily achieve the same outcome by sentencing them to life in prison. The purpose is to deter people from committing the crime at all. My argument is that it DOES NOT deter people from committing the crime for which the sentence is death. And furthermore, the risk of convicting and executing an innocent person is too high.

There is no almost certain chance it will never actually happen. Over 3/4 of people sentenced to death row are actually executed eventually. Most criminals newly arrived on death row rate their chances of eventually being executed at less than 1%, despite the actually figures.
The typical person who gets the death penalty in the US has great difficulty imagining they will still be the same person in six months, let alone 20 years. More than a third of them can't pass the tests used to see if fifth graders are learning to project long term consequences as far as the month level. A t least half typically have little to no ability to empathize with anyone not very like them in race, gender, age, and even accent. By some studies, up to 60% of them have a mental health history involving incidents of psychosis. By others, over half were abusing a psychoactive drug at the time of the offense.
If you want to deter them with the death penalty, you need the time from the actual comission of a crime to execution, to be less than two weeks, with all appeals. You need to show them somebody sufficiently like them being executed, within two weeks of the time they consider a death penalty crime of their own, and what you show them needs to be substantially for the same crime, as in, they won't shoot the clerk at the all night gas station, if they have seen a man who looks like them shoot a victim who looks like that clerk,in a similar setting, at night, for similar reasons, and then be given the death penalty for it. Show them a realistic dramatization of the crime and follow it immediately with showing the actual execution, and you have a good chance of deterring them from committing that particular style of crime for a few weeks to a few months. show them something with differences, including ones you probably think should make no difference, and that chance drops.
I don't really want to live in a nation where we have to televise 10 executions a week to cover all the possible combinations, and always sentence somebody within a week of the crime so that we have a week to squeeze in the appeals and actual execution. I don't think that's a workable deterrent. Considering that the time for deterrence basically is between the crime and the execution, not from arrest to execution, deterrence sounds like it just can't work with the typical subject.

I don't know. If you have the death penalty I can see pollution being a worthy offense. If you dump toxic waste into the drinking water and dozens get sick and die of cancer-- how is that any different from murder.

Good for China. Here in the US we would just fine them a few million... they would shift their assets to a sub division... sell that to themselves and declare bankruptcy without paying a dime. Then keep on doing what they were doing until they got caught the next time.

I don't believe in the death penalty, but I see the logic, it's in effect attempted murder in severe cases (or actual murder). Several coal mining companies have commited what amounts to manslaughter in the US.

In the real world cancer is not the only possible way pollution can shorten lives. And no, you don't "either die quickly or completely recover". The in-between outcomes are far more common.

Melamine in milk is not toxic in the way that you seem to be meaning, but it damages kidneys, shortening lives. Certain pesticides disrupt liver function and/or endocrine system function, causing grwoth and development problems. Air-borne particulate pollution triggers and exacerbates chroninc lung disease, shortening

I don't know. The folks who were caught putting melamine in pet food (and some people food, too) were executed. As have been LOTS of other people. Punishments in China tend to be rather arbitrary, and seem to change on an almost daily basis.

This is deeply ingrained in Chinese society. I read about ancient Chinese civilization that forbade people from turning in their family members for crimes. The family member would be punished for the crime of course, and the person who reported them would be publicly whipped or something like that. Good shit. If you went around the office talking smack about someone or defaming them they would also whip you publicly--god knows how many times I've wanted that to happen.

Since this is Slashdot, you might as well just refer to Larry Niven's "Known Space" series, where the punishment for large-scale pollution (e.g. using nuclear rocket engine in the atmosphere) was exactly that.

When the punishment for a crime is determined by "think along the lines of..." there is a serious problem with the law. Especially in an authoritarian government with little oversight or judicial checks.

Seriously, China? WTF. Going back to medieval values here? Executing people for pollution?

They should be punished, but death is a bit much.

Yeah, the death penalty should be reserved for angry guys who stab one person with a knife. The civilised punishment for poisoning the water drunk by thousands of people is a slap on the wrist and a fine that looks large to newpaper readers but causes no material harm to the perpetrator....

If you accept the legitimacy of the death penalty(obviously, if you don't, that's another story, and you aren't likely to approve of it for this purpose, or any other) serious pollution is actually highly logical:

The death penalty is usually assessed in cases of murder(esp. premeditated) or grievous bodily harm(especially premeditated or particularly gruesome in some way).

Well, guess what? Serious pollution is usually called 'serious' because it does, albeit at some epidemiological remove, cause some mixture of death and serious chronic health impairment, sometimes also nasty birth defects and the like.

It doesn't have the emotional punch of a nice juicy murder or a photogenic teenager getting raped or something; but pollution is a totally logical thing to punish by death(if you accept the traditional uses of the death penalty). Probably even better, in fact, because polluters are highly likely to be committing their crimes out of pure greed, not out of fear, passion, or other possible-to-rehabilitate/unlikely to reoffend motive.

There is no legitimacy to the death penalty for the very simple reason of abuse or just fair mistake or freak coincidence. The fact that people trust the chain of government, law-enforcement, forensic investigators, prosecutors, witnesses, jury as input for enforcing an irrevocable and terminal punishment such as the death penalty is baffling. There's so much that can (and does, and will continue to) go wrong there that the death penalty is just an overall dumb idea.

Yes, but a high profile enough environmental disaster will cause people to fall out of favor. Look at the tainted infant formula, you think that CEO got where he was without connections? It comes out that he allowed "bad thing" to happen, bad enough that it made China and the Chinese leadership look bad and he's tried and executed in a matter of weeks. The thing about buying politicians is that they don't stay bought, especially if your baggage suddenly costs more than your bribe.